It's been a while

Dear family and friends and acquaintances and strangers,

Hello again.

We are still alive.

We live in our new house and are almost all moved and settled in. 

The kids started school and Tommy and I have a good thing going at home.

We still miss our AZ friends and life, but have landed softly in Utah and are grateful for the family and friends who have padded our landing.

I feel like there is much to say, but my time lately is so limited in being able to sit and type it all out.

It will come.

Maybe when we are hunkered down in the kids first snowy winter.

Thank you for continuing to check in on us and for your prayers, love and support.

As it was throughout Jake's illness, your prayers have a sustaining effect and I am grateful for your continued thoughts in our behalf.

For now here is a talk that I gave a few weeks ago in church.

I was grateful to have an opportunity to share my thoughts with our new church congregation and for the gracious way that they have received our family.

Heavenly Father is merciful to us and I see His hand daily in our lives.

Love,

Jordan




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Making prayer meaningful

I am grateful to have the chance to speak today. I want to begin by expressing my sincere thanks for the way you embraced our family before you even knew us. We heard that many in this ward were praying for Jake through the last months of his life and were so touched by your faith manifest in his behalf. And since we have moved in you have been so wonderful to help, befriend, serve and love our family through this very difficult transition. Thank you for making it such a soft landing for me and our kids.

Because widowhood is new to me, I want to begin by telling you about our family. Jake and I were both born and raised in Orem, but did not meet until the fall of 2001 when were both interns in Washington DC for BYU’s Washington seminar program. Jake had returned a year earlier from a mission to Spain, and we became wonderful friends, but the timing wasn’t right as I received a mission call to serve in Venezuela. While I was on my mission Jake said that he “learned to become less awkward with girls” and when I got home he swept me off of my feet. We were were married in 2004. After graduating from BYU, we pursued graduate work at the school up the freeway, Jake earning his J.D. and me getting a Masters in Public Administration. It was a hard pill to swallow for a true blue fan like Jacob to attend law school at said university, and while we enjoyed the academic experience there it made us completely devoted BYU sports fans.

After we graduated, Jake took a job with Perkins Coie, a law firm in Phoenix, Arizona and we packed up our meager belongings and moved with our six-month-old daughter Lauren to our desert home. We lived in Phoenix for the last 10 years, adding Ellie, Ada, and Thomas to our family. We had the picture perfect life- stable job, healthy kids, wonderful friends, a house with a pool and were doing our best, like all of you, to make it through that busy time of life while staying close to the Lord.

And then in February of 2014 Jacob was diagnosed with Gliablastoma Multiforme, a terminal brain cancer. It presented suddenly and with no debilitating effects, but from one day to the next turned our world completely upside down. We learned that the average survival rate is 14 months as we swaddled our new 10-week-old baby boy.

And we started to pray.

We had always prayed throughout our growing up lives, as missionaries, in college, as a married couple and as parents with young children.

But suddenly our prayers took on new meaning. They were a lifeline between us and our Father as everything around us seemed to be spiraling out of control.

I am in a unique situation as a young widow, and before I was in this place I would not have known how to approach someone in my shoes.  For me, one of the hardest parts of leaving Arizona was leaving behind all of the friends, ward members and neighbors who knew Jake personally, knowing that wherever the kids and I go for the rest of our lives people would not have the opportunity to meet him. I hope you know that for me and our kids, there is nothing we enjoy more than speaking about Jake, sharing stories of him, and communicating what a wonderful person he is. He continues to exist and we still feel of his love. I don’t think you can really get to know our family without knowing him, and I pray that although most in this room will not be able to meet my beloved husband in person, or shake his hand, or see him sit with us at church that you will come to know him and love him as you learn about him, as we speak about him, and as he continues to watch over and care for me and our children.

I wish you could have been there to hear Jacob pray. I had always loved to hear him pray, but throughout the course of his illness his prayers became even more focused, spiritual, and communal. His prayers were gratitude driven, always recognizing the Lord’s hand throughout the day and expressing sincere thanks for His blessings. He pleaded simply for himself, and then supplicated earnestly for me, for our children, our families, and everyone who was praying for him. When Jacob prayed I knew he was talking with God.

It is easier to pray with meaning when we are in times of extremity. When everything is on the line and we have nowhere else to turn.

But how can our daily prayers become more meaningful?

The Bible dictionary is instructive. It says, “As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father and we are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part.”

Do we remember that every time we pray? That we are speaking to our beloved Father and that we- you and me- are his children? Prayers are not rote recitations, or calculated manipulations, or mundane expressions, or frivolous pleasantries.

They are cries, pleading, heart rendering, gratitude giving, soul yearning conversations that we can have with our Father in Heaven. He who knows us and loves us more than anyone else.

Do we take advantage of the great opportunity to commune with Him in this way?

Over the last week I read through several accounts in the scriptures of sincere and heartfelt prayer. Each prayer is enlightening and I would like to share some of them with you.

Enos entered the woods to pray, after the words which he heard his father speak sunk deep into his heart.  He says that his soul hungered and he kneeled down before his maker and cried unto him in mighty prayer. He describes the experience as a wrestle with God in which he prayed all day- even when the night came he did still raise his voice high that it reached the heavens.

I have always thought of Enos as a wonderful example of prayer, and after having spent hours in prayer on occasion, am still struck by his ability to persist in prayer for a whole day and night even as he struggled in the spirit. Clearly, from Enos we learn that powerful prayer is not easy or rote, and must require some great effort or sacrifice or desire on our part. (Enos 1: 1-10)

In contrast, King Lamoni’s father offered a prayer that was only a few sentences. After bowing down before the Lord, upon his knees, even prostrating himself upon the earth he cried mightily saying, “O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me? And I will give away all of my sins to know thee, that I may be raised from the dead, and saved at the last day.” (Alma 22:15-18)

His sincerity cannot be doubted as he told Aaron before he prayed that he was willing to give up ALL that he possessed- he would forsake his kingdom- that he might be born of God.  Are our hearts as open and willing to forsake all to receive His spirit?

Some prayers are joyful exclamations to the Lord for his wondrous works, power or blessings. Ammon glorified God for the miraculous conversion of the lamanites with these words, “Blessed be the name of our God; let us sing to his praise, yea, let us give thanks to his holy name. Therefore, let us glory, yea, we will glory in the Lord; yea we will rejoice, for our joy is full.” (Alma 26: 8, 16)

You cannot read these verses without feeling Ammon’s infectious joy in the Lord and to the Lord for his mercy and blessings. Jacob and I offered many prayers of amazed wonder and exclamation to the Lord for miracles in his treatment and our family life.  Joyful, gratitude filled prayers are enriching to our souls.

Then we go to the prayer of Joseph Smith in the Liberty Jail. After being imprisoned in freezing conditions, abused, starved and mistreated he cried out, “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place? How long shall thy hand be stayed, and thine eye behold from the eternal heavens the wrongs of thy people and of thy servants, and thine ear be penetrated with their cries?” (D&C 121: 1-2)

I think we have all had occasion to offer prayers of this sort. Crying, gut wrenching, sorrowful grief filled prayers to God to stop the wrongs, the hurts, the disappointments, or the pain that is happening in our lives. I know that prayers of this kind have been part of my experience in the last two and a half years. I have learned that whatever we are feeling or thinking, no matter how dark or horrible or hard or terrifying we can talk about it to our Father in prayer. He can handle it. He is often the only one who can.

And it is my experience, that just as he promised to Joseph in his agony, he promises to us: My son (or my daughter)- peace be unto thy soul. (D&C 121:7) The tangible, sustaining, lifting, enlivening, forgiving, encompassing peace that passeth all understanding and will keep our hearts and our minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7). 

There is no greater gift.

Finally, we look to the prayer offered by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. As he entered the garden his soul was sorrowful, even unto death. And he went a little further and fell on his face and prayed saying, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” 

Then he came to the disciples and found them asleep, asking Peter, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour? The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Then Christ returned, the second time, and prayed again saying, “O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.” 

Then he returned and found the disciples asleep again, and left them and prayed for the third time, saying the same words. “O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.”   (Matthew 26: 38-44)

Months ago I was reading these verses in Matthew 26 and wrote the following, “Oh what the Savior must have experienced. He did not want to do it. He asked if it could go away. He asked His Father. The perfect Son. And His Father said no. I cannot know how hard this must have been for them both.”

To those in this room who know how it feels to have it all go wrong and to have the answer be no, the Savior understands. He knows through his own experience and gives us the perfect example of humble acceptance through these words, “Thy will be done.”

I know that prayer is a gift and that as we approach our Father as did Enos, King Lamoni, Ammon, Joseph Smith and His Son in wrestling, sincere, grateful, honest, and submissive prayer He will hear and answer our cries. Sometimes the answers are not what we want. Sometimes they are exactly what we don’t want. But I also know that when the answer is no, our loving Father will not leave us comfortless. He will give us palpable peace through the Holy Ghost and comfort through the atoning grace of His beloved Son. So keep praying. Keep asking. Keep believing. Keep waiting. And the peace He has promised to you, under ANY circumstance, will most assuredly come.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.